New Rochelle, NY, January 3, 2013--Penetrating soft tissue injuries that may be caused by bullet wounds or motor vehicle accidents, or exposure to explosive devices in military settings, can cause muscle loss resulting in functional disability and cosmetic deformity. Efforts underway to develop tissue engineering solutions to repair and replace damaged and lost muscle will benefit greatly from the availability of robust animal models to test these innovative therapeutic strategies. A new rat model that simulates traumatic or surgical muscle tissue loss in humans is described in an article in BioResearch Open Access, a bimonthly peer-reviewed open access journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the BioResearch Open Access website.

Xiaowu Wu, MD, Benjamin T. Corona, PhD, Xiaoyu Chen, PhD, and Thomas J. Walters, PhD, United States Army Institute of Surgical Research (Fort Sam Houston, TX), Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Winston-Salem, NC), and University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, provide a detailed description of the methods used to create an animal model with approximately 20% volumetric muscle loss (VML) from the middle third of the tibialis anterior muscle. The authors demonstrate successful repair of the injury using a biological scaffold and present their findings in "A Standardized Rat Model of Volumetric Muscle Loss Injury for the Development of Tissue Engineering Therapies."

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About the Journal

BioResearch Open Access is a bimonthly peer-reviewed open access journal that provides a new rapid-publication forum for a broad range of scientific topics including molecular and cellular biology, tissue engineering and biomaterials, bioengineering, regenerative medicine, stem cells, gene therapy, systems biology, genetics, biochemistry, virology, microbiology, and neuroscience. All articles are published within 4 weeks of acceptance and are fully open access and posted on PubMedCentral. All journal content is available on the BioResearch Open Access website.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies, Tissue Engineering, Stem Cells and Development, Human Gene Therapy, and AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 70 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.

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